


After

by thedevilchicken



Category: Signs (2002)
Genre: Coming Out, M/M, Post-Canon, Religion, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-07
Updated: 2016-02-07
Packaged: 2018-05-18 22:27:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5945515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Merrill has a secret. He's not the only one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	After

**Author's Note:**

  * For [galerian_ash](https://archiveofourown.org/users/galerian_ash/gifts).



The world wasn’t a whole lot different, after. 

Maybe it was in the start, because people had died. People they knew had died, too, not just people half a world away in another country, so far away it was like watching a movie when they watched the news: people like Tracey Abernathy from the drugstore who’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time or something like that and wound up dead of the same stuff Morgan hadn’t in the end, thank God. Graham felt better knowing he’d been there for her, before, even if he’d been away from the church at the time. After all, he’d come back to it after. After what happened happened, he couldn't in all good conscience have stayed away.

The world wasn’t a whole lot different, at least in the way it kept on turning. 

Life went on and people rebuilt, they mourned then they tried to forget what they’d seen or tried to insure against it happening again, at least. Governments voted in programs to protect the planet from a threat they didn't really understand, carried on a tide of fear and disillusionment sprung up when Earth had found she truly wasn’t alone. There were new faces in the parish church when Graham returned to it, and he suspected they’d come more out of terror than from love. But days still passed the way they had before. People still ate and drank and laughed and cried and at the end of the day, they slept. The world kept on turning, even though they weren't alone.

The world wasn’t a whole lot different, except perhaps for Graham Hess. 

After, one day not long afterwards at all, Sergeant Cunningham at the recruitment office went and recruited Merrill. They fought that night, Bo and Morgan sitting on the stairs, Morgan’s hands over his sister’s ears so she didn’t have to hear but Morgan of course heard every word. The problem was that Graham understood, he really did, he _honestly_ did; Merrill wanted to help people, like Graham did, just in his own way. Graham couldn’t fault him, he couldn't begrudge him that, couldn't say it wasn't worth his time or even his life if it came to that. He just didn’t want him to go, and all that was was selfishness. Perhaps they hadn't been close as children, maybe they hadn't been close at all till their parents were gone and so was Colleen, but they'd been getting closer. Graham knew he'd miss that.

The world wasn’t a whole lot different, especially not after the first couple of years. 

Merrill came home when he could, stayed in the room over the garage that Graham and the kids hadn’t changed a bit because that part of their home was his. But they were robbed one night or at least Merrill’s room was; they heard voices, heard a door slam, heard footsteps, heard people running on the gravel driveway, and while Bo asked if the monsters had come back, Graham called Caroline and Morgan told his sister no, that was just men outside this time, everything would be okay, he promised. 

The next morning, Graham went up into Merrill’s place to straighten things up. And maybe the world wasn’t a whole lot different, not at large, not when you focused on the bigger picture, but Graham found some things in there that changed the whole damn world around him. He cursed. He actually _cursed_ , out loud though he was pleased there'd been no one there to hear him. And he knelt there by Merrill's bed peering into the box he’d opened up from underneath it, their new dog fussing all around him like he knew something was wrong, or at least different. Bo had insisted they call the dog Houdini 2 as if dogs had sequels the way movies did; Graham just wished he could Houdini himself out of the mess he'd gotten himself into. 

“You went through my stuff?” Merrill said, on the phone from who knew where. It turned out he was good at his job, not that they talked about it much, not that they talked often, and that smarted. The kids missed their uncle. Graham missed Merrill. Nothing quite felt right unless there was a light on out in Merrill's room.

“There was a break-in,” Graham said. “They took the TV and turned the place upside down. I was cleaning.”

“So, you went through my stuff.” 

Graham sighed. “Yes, I went through your stuff,” he conceded.

“Oh.”

“Yes.”

They paused. The pause grew into something longer, something harder, into the sound of people working in the background behind Merrill’s long sigh, the sound of the dogs barking outside as Caroline’s car pulled up the long driveway to the house. Graham was a priest again by then, a very good one, a great listener and he was told an excellent speaker, had sat down with so many people there in his office at the church and given his advice, helped them through tough times and tough decisions, tough truths. This shouldn't have been any harder, he thought. It was harder by far.

“You don’t know what to say,” Merrill said. 

“No, I don’t,” Graham replied. Because when it came to this, when it came to Merrill, none of the scripture he could quote, none of his various and sundry platitudes or penitence or prayers - he had one for every occasion - would do. 

“Look, forget about it,” Merrill said. “I’ll be back in a couple of months.” There was a brief moment’s pause then and Graham could almost see Merrill’s frown. He could almost see his hesitation. “You still want me there when I’m on leave next, right?”

“Of course we do.” Graham winced, screwed shut his eyes, rested his forehead against the wall by the phone that was attached there to it. “Of course _I_ do. This is your home.”

But he knew Merrill hadn't felt at home there since back before Graham inherited the place, before their parents died, when Bo's room had been Merrill's and Morgan's belonged to Graham who was never there. He'd said the wrong thing. He'd said all the wrong things, as if he'd set out to do it.

They hung up. Graham felt no better for the conversation. He felt a great deal worse for it, in fact. 

For the first two days the next time Merrill was home on leave, two months later, they tried to pretend that nothing had changed. It was late in the summer, hot outside and hot inside, hot everywhere because they'd always said they'd check into AC prices next year, next year. Temperatures were soaring, and Merrill made lemonade in the kitchen with Bo the way her mom had used to, before, to Graham and Merrill's mom's recipe. Morgan was growing up, had friends in town and on the third day of Merrill’s visit he went away, camping by the lake with a couple of friends and their parents. Graham was nervous - Morgan never been away from home more than a night or so in his life so far - but he had his inhalers and his friends’ parents were all good people, careful people, people he trusted as much as he trusted anyone outside the family. Then Graham and Merrill dropped Bo off at her school-friend’s house, handed her her bag and kissed her goodbye till tomorrow. Her first sleepover, though probably not the last if all went well; his parishioners kept giving him advice on parenting girls and somehow sleepovers and had figured prominently. He was anxious. It was the first time the house had been empty in years. 

The afternoon turned awkward without the kids. Graham and Merrill sat together on the couch in the family room, watched TV without really watching, awkward and uncomfortable and not, for once, because of funerals or aliens or even just lumpy upholstery. Graham glanced at Merrill; Merrill glanced at Graham; they both looked away. 

The evening turned awkward without the kids. They cooked together in the kitchen, made a chicken teriyaki because Merrill had always liked it and they picked at it with forks at the dining table while they avoided any semblance of eye contact. Then Merrill put down his fork with a clatter and sighed out loud. 

“We need to talk about this,” Merrill said. 

“I don’t think--”

“We need to _talk_ about this.” 

Graham sat back in his seat. He put down his fork very carefully, rubbed his sweaty palms over his thighs and finally, _finally_ , he looked at Merrill. 

“I don’t know what to say,” he said. 

“Then it’ll be a short conversation,” Merrill replied, and he smiled a small smile that for a second Graham couldn’t help but return in spite of it all. 

“So, where do we start?” he asked. 

“I guess we start with what you found in my room.”

It was just magazines. Just a box of magazines and for a start while he'd been sitting up there with a dustpan and brush and trash bags for the broken stuff amidst it all it’d seemed fine, seemed normal, seemed like something Graham might not strictly speaking have been able to approve of as a priest but once upon a time he’d understood the allure of a girlie magazine just as clearly as the next guy. But they weren’t all girls. The majority seemed to be, not that he’d taken the time to catalog, but some of them were distinctly... _not_. They were men. Naked men. Men doing things that Graham hadn’t been able to take his eyes off as he'd flicked through the pages, all at sea, all agog. And so he’d called Merrill, not knowing what he'd say. 

“I bet your eyes popped out on stalks,” Merrill said. “Like if Wile E Coyote found out the Roadrunner swings both ways.” 

“Do you?”

“What?”

Graham took a breath, reminding himself he'd had conversations about sexuality on many occasions over the years because that was just part of his job. Except this didn't feel like his office at the church. This didn't feel like a professional conversation. He'd never been professional where Merrill was concerned. “Do you swing both ways.” 

Merrill nodded. “Yeah,” he said, with a faint trace of a smile. “I guess I have done since high school. You remember Bobby Rand from the baseball team?” 

Graham blanched. “Were you and he…?” He frowned. “You’re teasing me.” 

Merrill shrugged, and his smile widened. “I guess maybe I am,” he said, and settled himself forward in his seat, rested his elbows on the table. “Look, so I like to look at guys sometimes. I’m not embarrassed about it. I wish you wouldn’t be. It's really not a big deal. I mean, I'm not gonna go dancing through town singing _It's Raining Men_.” 

Graham nodded. Graham returned the smile, chuckled, albeit hesitantly. But when he went to bed that night, when Merrill jogged out into the yard and up the stairs to head to bed too, all he could think was _look at_. _Look at_ , Merrill had said. _Look at_ , not _date_ , not _make out with_ , not _sleep with_ , just _look at_. Merrill had liked to look at guys in a magazine in his room above the garage, and maybe he was doing it right then, maybe he was _looking at_ them right then, flicking through the pages till he found one he liked more than the others, his favorite, like Graham had done with the girlie magazine he and his friends had passed around in high school till Johnny Jackson’s mom had found it. Johnny had been grounded for a month and Graham hadn’t lied when his parents asked if he’d seen it. He’d never been able to lie worth a damn, not even then. It just didn't seem natural to lie.

Maybe Merrill was _looking at_ one of those magazines right at that moment. Maybe he was _looking at_ one of the photos Graham had seen, though he'd stopped himself before he'd opened every magazine. Maybe he was on his knees on the bed or sitting there cross-legged in his worn old Nike sweats, leaning back against the headboard of his worn old bed while he _looked_. You look with your eyes, not your hands, but that didn’t seem to be quite the point as Graham screwed shut his eyes and as his hand went under his t-shirt, as he rubbed at the hair that ran down over his belly and nudged at the waist of his pyjamas. As his hand went down, as his fingers wrapped tight around the length of him, as he stroked, as he came, he wasn’t thinking about what Merrill was looking at. He was thinking the same thing he’d thought every night for two months, since an awkward phone call to an Army base after a robbery that had upset everything he’d known about himself. 

He wasn’t thinking about what Merrill was looking at; he was thinking about Merrill looking at what he was looking at. 

In the morning, they cooked breakfast. Merrill made good pancakes, better than Graham ever had, but cooking for just the two of them seemed harder somehow, for both of them, than cooking for Morgan and Bo as well. The house seemed empty without them, even if everything still ticked on as normal just like the rest of the world did; Graham had made his bed and showered, fed the dogs, read the newspaper over coffee at the kitchen table, dressed in jeans because contrary to popular belief his suit and his collar didn't follow him every waking minute of his life even now he'd returned to the priesthood. And then there Merrill was, making pancakes for four when there weren’t four of them to eat them. Graham watched him do it. 

“You’re watching me,” Merrill said, and glanced his way as he turned out pancakes onto a plate. “Do you have a question?”

“A question?” 

Merrill passed him the first plate, piled high with pancakes and bacon, too hot for a sunny summer morning, too much when he had no appetite, though it did look good. 

“A question. About what we talked about last night.” Merrill joined him at the kitchen table. “Like, how did I know I liked guys? I guess it’s a cliché but it was the showers after practice. Have I ever dated a guy? I tried once, didn’t work out any better than with girls, y’know? Have I ever gone to bed with a guy?” Merrill paused, glanced over at Graham from his pancake stack and then looked back down at it as he cut them with his fork. “Yeah, a few times.”

“I wasn’t going to ask,” Graham said, but maybe the flush in his cheeks said he’d wanted to. Maybe his tight little smile said he'd been curious.

They went into town after breakfast, walked around in the sun, ducked into the drugstore to pick up Morgan’s new prescription, ducked into the market just to get out of the too-hot sun. Merrill was walking too close at his side but Graham couldn’t step away. Merrill sat too close in the car, on the couch when they got back home, but Graham couldn’t move away, couldn't make himself do it or didn't want to, told himself he was just imagining it anyway. He jumped a country mile when the phone rang, and almost ran away to pick it up just to find Bo wanted to stay with her friend another night. Her friend’s mom had said yes and so he said yes and when he hung up the phone, he rested his head down against the wall. Merrill was watching him, just pretending he wasn’t. They could get through another night alone. They’d watch a movie, eat popcorn, pretend everything was fine. They'd make it fine because the last thing he wanted to do was drive Merrill away, out of the house he'd tried to make as much Merrill's home as his own.

But when he went to bed that night, when Merrill jogged out to head up to bed too, all he could think was _a few times_. Was that a few times with the same guy? Was it a few times with a few guys? Had he been sleeping with someone in high school or with someone on the baseball team, had there been guys in the Army since he’d been away? Was he seeing someone right then that he just hadn't gotten up the courage yet to talk about? But what he had in his head when his hand went down, when he closed his eyes and stroked and squeezed, wasn’t make-believe of the guys Merrill might have been with. He wasn’t thinking about who did what to whom or when or how, cheap motel rooms between games or Army bases between deployments. He wasn’t thinking about guys having sex with Merrill, conjuring height and build, hair color, eye color, ethnicity, names. 

What he had in his head was Merrill and him, his hands on him, his mouth on him, and he hated himself for it. 

Merrill left in the morning; he put on his uniform, tossed his bag into the back seat of the car and Graham drove him into town. They hugged awkwardly at the bus stop, patting each other on the back like they'd forgotten how to hug at all. Then Merrill stepped up onto the bus and he waved from the window as he went away. 

When Graham got home, after Bo was tucked up in bed for the night, after Morgan had gotten home exhausted from his camping trip with stories he'd be telling for weeks, he went upstairs to bed and closed the door behind him. He changed his clothes, he brushed his teeth, he lay down and felt the pillow crinkle beneath his head in a way he hadn't been expecting. There was something underneath; he turned on the lamp that sat there on the nightstand and he sat himself up, fumbled under the pillow, pulled out one of Merrill’s magazines with a jolt of something in him that he couldn’t name at all. He took a breath. Then the note fluttered out from the pages and onto the bedspread. 

_The church is pretty progressive_ , the note read. _Plenty of priests aren’t all the way straight these days._

_P.S. I like page 9._

Merrill wasn’t far wide of the mark, Graham thought, but at the same time he was miles away. 

Merrill had no leave for the next three months. He called once a week, bad lines, swift conversations just asking how they were, saying he was fine, no time for more because the queue for the phone was really long, he had to grab food, they were moving out again. Perhaps the aliens hadn’t returned but the Middle East still needed troops. Even alien invasion hadn’t helped end that war; if anything, it'd made it worse. 

Merrill had no leave for three months then there he was, bag in hand on the doorstep. The kids greeted him first but it was past Christmas by then, the vacation was over, so Morgan had homework spread out over the dining table and Bo was practicing her dancing in the family room, though her last recital had only just passed. Merrill helped Morgan with his math while Graham cooked then they cleared the table and sat down to dinner and all the while, through Bo’s excited chatter about her dancing, through Morgan’s understandable pleasure that his asthma seemed to be letting up just enough for him to play sports sometimes so maybe he’d get to play baseball after all, just like his uncle, Merrill was glancing at Graham. He wasn’t even subtle about it. He didn’t seem to be trying to be, or maybe Graham noticed because he was doing the exact same thing at the exact same time. 

“Night, Graham,” Merrill said, as he left the couch later, after the kids were already in bed. “I’m going to try to get some sleep.” And Graham nodded and let him go, went upstairs to change and brush his teeth and head to bed, but he sat down on the edge of his mattress and he paused, and he sighed, and he rubbed at his face with his hands. Three minutes later he was knocking on Merrill’s door, out there in his pyjamas and a pair of worn old work boots that had never looked so out of place before. 

“Is something wrong?” Merrill asked, as he opened the door. 

Graham shook his head. Graham held out his hand, the magazine Merrill had left with him there in it. “I thought you might want this back,” he said, and Merrill laughed, turned his back and stepped back inside. He left the door wide open and so Graham followed him, then closed the door behind him. 

“Was I wrong?” Merrill asked. 

“About what?”

“About the note.” 

Merrill sat down on the edge of his bed. Perhaps he hadn’t changed much since he’d gone away, since the Army, just a bit trimmer, just a bit more muscular, maybe he stood up just a bit straighter, but the room was tidier at least. For once, everything had a place and was actually in it, but Graham couldn’t say he’d arrived there thinking over the décor. He hadn't been back in since he'd cleaned up after the break-in.

“You weren’t wrong,” Graham said, curling the magazine up in his hands, fairly wringing them around it. 

“So you’re…”

“I loved Colleen.” He said it too fast, made himself wince.

“I didn’t say you didn’t,” Merrill said. “I really think you did. I was at the wedding, remember? But you’re...” 

“I had a friend in college.” Graham shook his head, took a breath, sighed it out, turned around in a lopsided circle like he had no direction, no clue, no idea what he was doing, and he supposed very much that he didn’t. “His name was Simon.”

“You mean you had a friend at _divinity school_?” Merrill said, brows raising. 

Graham nodded. “Yes,” he said. “That’s what I mean. Before I ever met Colleen. Before the kids. Before I knew I was coming back here at all. Before I was sure I really had a calling.” He went closer, took a seat next to Merrill on the edge of the bed then stood back up again, walked away, turned around and then went back again and sat back down, indecisive, agitated, anxious. 

“Was it serious?”

“I think so. But he left, and I became a priest.” 

Merrill nodded, looking thoughtful, glanced at him then reached over and tapped on the front of the magazine in Graham’s hands. "So, did you look at page nine?” he asked. 

Graham didn’t say he’d waited till three days after Merrill had left, waited till he couldn’t stand it anymore, waited till he’d _had_ to look. Then he’d settled down one morning when he didn’t have to be over at the church, when the kids had both left for school, when there was no one to see and the doors were all locked, when his bedroom curtains were drawn and he could pretend he didn't hate himself for being tempted. He turned on the lamp and he took out the magazine from under a stack of papers and letters and an old spy novel he’d borrowed from the library but hadn't read and probably never would, and he sat there, on the bed, and he turned to page nine. 

Graham didn’t say he’d winced and he’d grimaced and he’d tortured himself, he’d closed the magazine and put it away, taken it back out and looked again then put it back in the drawer, gone downstairs. He didn’t say he’d lasted fourteen minutes trying to concentrate on the newspaper though he'd read the same like eight times without really reading it before he was back upstairs again with the magazine laid open on the bed and his hand down the front of his jeans because he couldn’t even wait to undress. There were two men on the page, one naked and erect, the other on his knees with his mouth and his hand wrapped around him. There were two men on the page and one was dressed as a priest and he should've been appalled at himself, been repulsed by himself, should've thrown the magazine away and pretended none of it had ever happened, but he came in his jeans with a sob. 

Graham didn’t say what he’d had in his head when he’d come that morning, that night, any other day since. He didn't say what he'd hoped it had meant and then hadn't dared then dared again while he turned himself inside out with truths and wants and consequences. What he did was turn the magazine in his hands, bite his tongue, open it up at page nine and fold back the cover. What he did was hand it to Merrill like that with one of his own stark white clerical collars tucked in there marking the page and Merrill looked at him, frowned at him, opened his mouth as if to say something to him but no words came. They were becoming experts in uncomfortable silence. 

Perhaps he’d made a mistake. Perhaps he’d made the biggest mistake of his life, the biggest mistake he’d ever make. Perhaps he’d misunderstood completely and perhaps he’d just pushed his brother away in the most final of terms, he thought, more than their difference in age or in skills or in temperament ever had. But then Merrill smiled, Merrill lit up bright and Merrill hugged him tightly, and all Graham could do was hug him back, terrified, bewildered. 

Then Merrill’s fingers were at the nape of his neck, making him shiver. Then Merrill’s mouth brushed his jaw and made him take a quick, sharp breath. And then Merrill pulled back with a frown. 

“You’re sure, right?” he asked. “You’re not just doing this ‘cause you think I’m going to step on an IED so you want to send me off happy?”

Graham chuckled. Graham smiled. Graham _grinned_ he was so relieved and in the moment, he kissed him, pressed his lips to Merrill’s lips and _kissed_ him. He didn’t catch himself in time to stop it, caught himself the moment after and by then it was too late to do much but kiss him again, kiss him _again_ , his hands coming up to frame Merrill’s face, to cup his jaw, to brush against his cheekbones. Merrill let him. Merrill kissed him back. Merrill’s fingers caught the hem of Graham’s shirt and held him there in place like he thought he'd flee at any second. 

“I’m sure,” Graham said, and pulled back, hands at Merrill’s shoulders, thumbs brushing at his neck. “Nervous, maybe. But sure.” He rested his forehead down against Merrill’s. “But next time could we try to find a way to discuss things that's not through pornography?”

Merrill just laughed. Graham took that as a yes. 

The world wasn’t a whole lot different, after. 

The world kept turning and the aliens didn’t return, though a whole generation of children was born who’d never known a world where aliens hadn’t landed, who wouldn’t understand how definitive proof of life on other worlds had come as a surprise to anyone. Graham was still more surprised that neither he nor Merrill had baulked at the idea of what they were doing, at least not for long enough to stop. They'd finally found a way to relate to each other, the way they'd been missing for years, the way Graham guessed they'd been missing forever. Aliens seemed quite commonplace after that.

The day Merrill was born, Graham was away at college. He could still remember going back home from Massachusetts for spring break his freshman year, finding out at the dinner table once Grandpa Hess had said grace that his mom was pregnant. She'd been a bit old to have a second child then, maybe, she was in her forties, but Grandpa said it was God's will and that meant it was meant to be. Graham hadn't been sure. Graham hadn't been sure of much at all at the time. 

He remembered all of the phone calls home that summer while he was working out there in Cambridge, because he didn't want to go home to Pennsylvania. Home and the farm and Bucks County and Philly all seemed a million miles away and not just a few hours in the car or on a bus, like the other side of the world when he'd still have been able to drive there in a day if he'd wanted to. He called instead, asked his mom how she was doing but he didn't know how to be a brother. He didn't know what he wanted to be, didn't know much about who he was or what he wanted at all, had some tough decisions and confusing questions and his mom's pregnancy just seemed to make it all ten times harder. 

He remembered going home for Thanksgiving that year. He was nineteen years old and there he was, parking his third-hand Volvo on the gravel driveway past sunset, and when he went inside, his mom smiled. 

"There's your big brother," she'd told the child in her arms, and Graham looked at it, looked at _him_ , and he looked back. And Graham tried, he really tried because he loved his mom and he respected his dad and they were all good people. But somehow all the disillusionment he felt got centered there in Merrill even before he could walk or talk or do much of anything but cry. Graham had gone back to Cambridge, feeling like his home was there and not with his family. He loved his brother because they were brothers and he knew he was meant to love him, but they weren't friends. Once he'd decided on his life, once he'd become a priest, once he'd married Colleen, the space between the two of them just seemed so much wider. 

They'd gone to Merrill's games, of course, once their mom had passed away. Graham and Colleen took the house and Merrill seemed fine with shifting his stuff into the space above the garage, seemed fine with moving out, moving in with some of the guys from the team, then moving away, moving on. It was a shame they weren't closer, Colleen had always said; she'd been an only child and she'd have loved to have a brother or a sister. Maybe that was why they had two kids of their own in the end, and maybe the void between Graham and Merrill was why they'd had Morgan and Bo so close together. Nineteen years was a long time. 

Then Colleen was gone. Then family seemed to mean something important. Merrill had dutifully come home to help, though Graham knew he'd never been sure he'd been welcome, though he'd tried everything he knew to make him feel he mattered, like the house was his home too. They'd both grown up there, after all, just nineteen years apart; even if their memories were different, even if Grandpa Hess had died before Merrill's first birthday, if the town had grown by hundreds by the time Merrill went to school, even if all Merrill had ever seen was the man Graham had become and not the mixed-up teen he'd been, there were things they shared. And Graham realised that night in Merrill's room that the guilt he'd felt over shutting Merrill out just didn't matter anymore. Merrill kissed him, Merrill smiled, and Graham knew he understood. Merrill belonged there, with him: not because he was needed but because he was wanted. They were finally brothers. Everything else was just nuance.

They took it slow because slow seemed sensible, if anything seemed sensible at all about anything at all they were doing. It was four months till they kissed again and even then they took their time, slowed down, sat together in Merrill’s room somewhere past midnight and Graham ran his thumb over the scar in Merrill’s lip, made him smile with it. It was six months after that till they did anything else, one morning while the kids were out at school. Merrill took off his shirt and Graham watched, comically wide-eyed, till Merrill raised his brows and said, “Your turn,” hands on hips. 

“I’m too old to be this embarrassed,” Graham muttered, once they were naked, once they were standing there together up in Merrill’s room with all the curtains drawn tight and the door firmly locked, once Merrill’s hands were on him, on his chest, his arms, his hips. Merrill just grinned and kissed him, pushed him down onto the bed with a bounce that made him laugh. Graham had to admit that amongst other things, it soothed his nerves.

The first night they went further, it had been thirty years or more since Graham had been with a guy. He knew what to do but Merrill talked him through it anyway, teased him when he tripped over his own shoes on the way to the bed, teased him when he knelt on the lube and yelped as it squirted all over the sheets, teased him as the condom slipped from his hands for the second time and then he sat up and took it from him, rolled it on over the length of Graham's cock instead. 

“Don’t look so scared,” Merrill said, with a smile, but he looked pretty scared himself, he looked terrified of it all, of tearing down the new relationship they'd built up there between them just the way Graham was. He looked terrified right up until Graham was finally in him, till he had his legs wrapped up around Graham’s waist, till his hands found Graham’s biceps and squeezed there, tight. After that, he just looked happy, looked relieved, looked vital and alive. He looked better than anything Graham had ever seen in a magazine. 

The world wasn’t a whole lot different. Days came and went just like they always had; time moved on. Morgan started high school, played baseball and got pretty good at it, too. Bo just wanted to dance and so she danced and she danced, around the house and up on stage, put on pointe shoes in the end and smiled for the video camera at all of her recitals and sometimes Morgan reminded her of the night she wouldn't let him tape the history of the future over one of them. They had a whole shelf full of them, never threw them away though Morgan converted them all to DVDs in the end. And Graham went to work, gave his sermons, christened children, married couples the way he had for years, and looked forward to Merrill’s phone calls, looked forward to his visits home. Sometimes he wore his collar. Merrill liked that. He’d seen the signs so clearly that day when the aliens came that he couldn’t question for a second that there was a plan for him; there was a plan for them all and Merrill was part of his, and he was a part of Merrill’s. Things happened for a reason. There was a design. And for the first time in a long time, secure in that knowledge, Graham truly was happy.

Merrill came home for good six years after he left for the Army and he never left again. Perhaps the world wasn’t a whole lot different, after, but to the two of them it sure seemed that way.


End file.
